I was 12 years old, in the eighth grade, at St. Phillip’s Catholic School on Hill Street in Pasadena, just below Colorado Blvd. where they have the Rose Parade every year.

We lived on Hill street, but farther up, just above Washington Blvd., just a few doors up from Octavia’s Bookshelf, a bookstore created by my friend Nikki High. It wasn’t there then, and Nikki hadn’t been born yet.

We were renting part of the bottom floor of a two-story house. Maybe it was the whole bottom floor, but we never used all of it. There was a living room and a dining room. I had walked through them, so I knew they were there. But we never had anybody over, not friends or relatives or neighbors, so those rooms were always empty.

The landlady lived upstairs in the top half of the house. That’s what landladies do.

I was alone all the time.

My Mother was off to work somewhere. I never knew what she did or how she got her money. Sometimes she would come home to fix some food.

My Brother was off at high school being a teenager. He was three years older and went to a different school, St. Francis, way over at the other end of town in La Canada. He would hang out there all day, so I guess that was his way of not being lonely.

I was used to being by myself. I had pretty much grown up that way. I did miss my Father. He lived miles further down in Monterey Park.

Our family was not your typical ordinary middle class family. Partly because we were too poor to be middle class. Partly because my Mother had left my Father when I was eight in the 4th grade. She took the children, my brother and me, and flew us back to Buffalo and the Catholic nest of the family.

After a year, she missed my Father, and brought us back to Monterey Park. After about another year she left us with my Father and went off to marry someone else. After about a year she came back and stayed for awhile, then went off to marry someone else.

As I said, we were not a typical family of the time.

I spent so much time by myself that I got used to it. I read a lot, understood most of it, remembered some.

There weren’t any children around in the neighborhood. At least none that I knew about. So I didn’t have anybody to play with, wasn’t very good at it, and outgrew my childhood without learning how to be young.

My room was my kingdom. I came in by a side door. I would go down to the kitchen when I got hungry to find some food.

Otherwise I’d sit on my bed, propped up with a pillow, a floor length reading lamp over my shoulder, reading Ivanhoe.

We had a little backyard with grass. It wasn’t very big and there were a few plants around the edges, and sometimes I’d go there to sit in the sun and read my book.

I don’t remember if I was supposed to take care of the yard and plants like a gardener, but I suspect that if I didn’t know, I didn’t do it. I was lazy, I admit it.

Just next door on the other side of our driveway was a court with two rows of separate little one story flat roof individual houses on both sides of a pathway that went down the middle.

I didn’t know any of the people who lived there, except this one guy who lived in the first little house on the far side.

He seemed pretty much by himself, like me, and sometimes came out to sit in the sun. He seemed to be a fairly young man, but I never asked. He had been in the war. I think he had been wounded. I think that’s why he was home all the time.

He didn’t seem to have a job to go off to work to, and I guess he lived on the government which was still paying.

I think he had been in the navy. I think he had been in Japan, where he met his wife. I don’t remember what she looked like, or if I ever saw her. I think maybe she wanted to go back to Japan.

I think they didn’t have any children. That’s probably because of being wounded in the war. I think the wife was the boss, and he felt guilty because he couldn’t do his duty.

I’m not sure of any of this, but I think I got it right.

Sometimes, when he came out, and I came out, we’d say hello. I think we both needed friends and started talking.

Somehow our talking got around to music and records. He was cautious about admitting what he liked, because it wasn’t the usual. He liked opera singing and violins.

Even in the navy, that’s not what people listened to. But he had records. Old 78 rpm records, 10” singles. They were those thick heavy black kind of hard rubber asphalt records that could break if you dropped them. He had Heifetz playing the violin. He had Caruso singing tenor.

Technical innovation had so advanced that the record industry was now all 33 1/3 rpm, mostly 12” vinyl for the albums. You could play both sides and get an hour of music and the record players had needles that didn’t wear out so quick that you had to change them.

I had a record player that played both speeds, and had a record arm where you could flip over the needle from 78 to 33 1/3.

I think the guy’s name was Stephen. That’s close enough and may be right, so I’ll call him Stephen.

Stephen and I talked records. Not very often, because we didn’t come outside very often.

I liked the music he did, and had records. Mostly 33 1/3, but some 78s, some even older than his because my Father liked the same and was even older.

Stephen was amazed and astonished that anybody liked his music, even more amazed that the 12 year old kid next door, me, knew about it, and liked it with a passion.

I got the feeling that he wished he had discovered me sooner so we could listen to the records together.

I had the impression that his Japanese wife didn’t want the records around the house, that she was going back to Japan, that he didn’t know what would become of him, and offered me his records.

He had a small stack of 10” 78s, mostly in sleeves or dust jackets, and said, “These are my records. Here, do you want them?”

He was happy that I took them. He knew I’d play them.

That was seventy years ago. I still have the records, on a shelf in the garage. They’re fixing the roof of the garage.

I think I still have our old record player. I think I can get it to work.

Here’s a video of another one, with the owner giving a demonstration: